


Bridge Over Troubled Water

by NeoVenus22



Series: Troubled Water [2]
Category: Power Rangers S.P.D., Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-26
Updated: 2009-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-05 07:07:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeoVenus22/pseuds/NeoVenus22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bridge had the feeling that if he ever touched Duncan, his head would explode.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bridge Over Troubled Water

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: Veronica Mars season one; and "Beginnings", "A-Bridged", and "Samurai" of SPD.  
> Bridge's backstory is my own creation, and holds no relevance to any other backstories.

Bridge had the feeling that if he ever touched Duncan — he meant really touched, no gloves and no holds barred — Bridge's head would explode. Everyone had their problems. With Sky's father issues, and Jack and Z's past on the street, Syd's overachieving, and their status as mutants, none of them were perfect. But they were functioning. Duncan was just barely holding on.

What little Bridge knew about Duncan's Issues With A Capital I, he'd gleaned from tabloids. The dead sister. The obstruction of justice. The true killer, his best friend's father (who was sleeping with the dead sister, pre-death). Those were the most basic of the basics, and Bridge knew he was just barely scraping the surface. There was so much more to Duncan Kane than he let on, an intricate latticework web of screwed-up.

Bridge's power was the most complicated of any of the Rangers. The others all had clearly defined mutations, whereas Bridge's got more complex with every passing day. In the beginning, he could only read auras, and through that, judge what was 'good' and what was 'bad', and in a way, sense evil. Over time, it had developed, and he could read thoughts, with enough concentration, he could track auras to a certain point in time, and he had an unfortunate case of empathy. For the most part, it was contained when he wore his gloves. It was a largely tactile power, situated for some reason in his hands. The very hands that gave him so much joy building things, were equal parts his curse, because gloves, no matter what brand-new, sleek, skintight leather brand he bought, were clumsy and useless when playing with delicate computer parts.

Even when he wore his gloves, however, he could still get senses. He could feel emotions, vibrating the air around him. But when he took off his gloves, he could feel everything, in full technicolor, as if it were his own. If Sky was pissed off, it would pummel Bridge as effectively as if the Blue Ranger just whalloped him in the face. And when he touched, he had fragments of memories, and thoughts, and emotions, swirling together crazier than anything they led you to believe about the 1960s. He'd tried it with Syd, which had been tame enough, because Syd had little true pain in her life, and was for all intents and purposes the most normal of the Rangers, and he'd survived. With Duncan, though, Bridge knew — he wouldn't be so lucky.

Bridge needed to use his hands to access the greatest strengths of his powers, but he could still feel it when he kissed Duncan. There was the hint of an aura around the other man, dark and pain and confusion and sadness that Bridge couldn't even begin to understand. He knew that Duncan would probably never tell him, and although he was dying to know, he kept away from any cheap rags that might spill the intimate details of Duncan's life beyond sister Lilly, father Jake, mother Celeste, and Aaron Echolls.

When he was younger, Bridge had gone to the movies every weekend with his little sister when their mother wanted to be alone. Bridge had gone through his Aaron Echolls phase, smitten with the idea of a hero, like Aaron in _Death Fist_. He longed for the day when he, too, could be that guy, the one that everyone respected and listened to, the one who saved people every day. He'd been recruited for SPD because of his powers, but Aaron Echolls was the reason he'd stayed. He never told Duncan any of this, and he was glad as hell that Duncan was powerless.

Duncan was on and off pills. The off ones were in an orange bottle he carried with him, unopened and expired, four syllables. The on ones were what he referred to as 'the old standbys', for his 'condition'. Duncan would flush the pills one by one, while Bridge perched on the edge of the bathtub and watched. Sitting Indian-style on the fuzzy bathroom rug was one of the few times Duncan was animated. He loved to rant about his mother's need to have him so doped up he was a zombie. Bridge never said a word about the fact that Duncan was almost zombie-like, anyway. It didn't seem appropriate.

When he was younger, Bridge's mother had gone to doctors about his peculiar pains, throbbing headaches and swollen hands. She'd had him put on prescription after prescription that never worked. Duncan was confused when Bridge blurted his confession during one if their monthly 'purging' rituals. "She thought I was sick," he explained, while Duncan abandoned his task long enough to lean back against the wall and watch Bridge intently. "The doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I started to wear gloves to hide the fact that my hands were weird, and after that, the problem started to go away. I think we both figured it out at about the same time." Duncan knew about Bridge's abnormality, but they never discussed it, just like they never discussed Duncan's sister.

"Welcome to the club," Duncan had said with a laugh. "Screwed-up boys, and the mothers who hate them." He'd dumped the remaining half of the bottle in the toilet without ceremony, and Bridge had done the flush himself.

Bridge was a talker. Duncan was a lot like Sky in the sense that he almost never spoke. However, when Sky spoke, it was something usually snappy, derogatory, cutting without intent to cut (and sometimes with). The rare occasions Duncan opened his mouth, it was bitter and sad. Which was why when Duncan opened his mouth, Bridge made it a point to capture it with his. He would try to take away the bitterness, and try to infuse Duncan with strength and words of his own — happy, babbling, nonsense words because Bridge had plenty of those to spare.

Duncan drank sometimes. He said it was all right, because he didn't have 'episodes', and even though liquor wasn't allowed past SPD walls, Bridge figured if he didn't partake, it wasn't entirely breaking the rules. He had his own reasons for putting his butt on the line. When Duncan drank, it was one of the other few occasions where he became as talkative as he ever got. After months of non-communication, in two alcohol-hazed nights, Bridge learned all of the sordid details of the Duncan/Veronica/Logan love triangle, culminating with Logan's party and his simultaneous betrayal, how Duncan's best friend took Duncan's (ex-)girlfriend. Bridge finally dared to ask, "Are you upset because you lost Veronica to Logan, or lost Logan to Veronica?"

Duncan stared at him for five seconds, stared into the mouth of his vodka bottle for sixty, and then finally, after a long drink, answered, "How could they do that to Lilly."

"Are you seeing anyone?" Duncan asked one night, twirling an empty beer bottle in and out of his fingers with surprising dexterity. Duncan and Bridge weren't anything official. Bridge shook his head.

"What about Z?" Duncan threw out the name with a casual tug at the lips of his empty bottle. Bridge was surprised that Duncan remembered who Z was, remembered anything that Bridge had said about her, and had been able to interpret the facets of their relationship. He didn't talk, but he listened.

Bridge didn't know if he was gay or straight or bi or what. He knew he was friendly, but that friendliness came with a price, because people thought he was stupid. He knew he was great with computers, but that people misinterpreted that as nerdiness and a social defect. He knew he was a mutant, bearing a power that was maybe a gift, and maybe a curse. Everything was one shade of gray or another, that labels didn't seem to mean much. His attraction to Z differed in his attraction to Duncan only in the sense that Z was one way, and Duncan was another. "I'm not," he said finally. "Z and I are just friends." He had to pause and think about it. "Are you? Seeing anyone, I mean."

"I'm seeing you," said Duncan. "That's enough." That was the closest either of them had ever gotten to calling their relationship a relationship.

A lot of the time, admittedly, Bridge wasn't sure why they were together. They were nothing alike, and had nothing in common except being in the same grocery store at midnight, trying to escape. Bridge had wanted a breath of air that wasn't regulated by the Academy. Duncan wanted to go somewhere where no one knew him. They had bumped into each other, the only customers in the store, in the aisle with the prepackaged smoked meat. Their hands had both closed around the same package of teriyaki jerky. There'd been nervous laughter, and a quick game of gesturing wildly at jerky, each insisting that the other take it. Bridge had finally caved first, accepting and paying for the jerky, but as they walked out into the parking lot together, he asked if the other man wanted some.

"Sure, why not," was the response, with a small half-smile. Bridge had to take his gloves off to open the package, and he'd felt the other man's pain in a rush. He'd handed him a piece, they'd introduced each other, and Bridge couldn't help but feel himself drawn to the quiet man sitting on the curb under the glow of a streetlamp. He wanted to know everything about Duncan, and why he had such a strong aura of sadness around him.

Bridge had never been to high school. He'd been recruited to SPD right out of middle school, which saved him from uncomfortable explanations. The people he dealt with every day were trainers — people that were focused solely on how fast you could move and how well you could fight — and cadets — people who were focused solely on fighting, fighting hard, fighting harder, making it to A-squad. Bridge had become friends with Syd because they were a lot alike in the sense that they weren't like anyone else at the Academy. Sky was forced into their circle simply because they were the three best students in their level. In high school, you made friends with people because you shared interests, and you could actually go somewhere after school ended, to continue sharing your interests and expand your friendship. Duncan would tell him stories about high school, about extracurriculars like being student body president, or a columnist for the school newspaper. About competing for scholarships. It was an alien world to Bridge. He was being bred to be full-fledged SPD. That was his present and his future.

Duncan said he was being bred, too. Any interests he had weren't really interests, but things to pad his college applications and resumes. "I can't remember what I actually like anymore," said Duncan, when Bridge had asked. Duncan was being bred to be a perfect politician, a figure of extreme importance and prestige.

"And just imagine what the voters will say when they find out about me," joked Bridge. After the words had left his mouth, he realized how feeble it sounded, how full of stupid expectations.

"My mutant boyfriend?" said Duncan with a smile that almost scared Bridge, if only because he saw Duncan smile so rarely that it was alien. Still, he found himself blushing, because that word had never been used before in a context that featured the both of them.

"I was going to say a nerd," said Bridge quickly.

And then Duncan laughed, and it was genuine, and took Bridge by surprise. He pressed his mouth to Duncan's, swallowing down the laughter and letting it warm his stomach. He was happy, and it flared, filling his lungs and his throat, exploding out his mouth in a bout of giggles.

"What are you laughing about?" demanded Duncan, a tiny upward curve to the corners of his mouth. It was the closest to anything resembling peace that Bridge had ever seen in Duncan's face.

"Absolutely nothing." Bridge beamed, and leaned into Duncan again. Duncan burbled with his own amusement, and they were both kissing and laughing too hard to firmly accomplish one or the other.

Unbeknownst to Duncan, Bridge slid off one glove. He flexed his fingers tentatively, ready for an onslaught.

Nothing.

He didn't feel a wave of pain, there was no dark aura, there wasn't even the light of Duncan's giddiness. They'd canceled each other out; the aura was nothing, and Duncan was at peace.

It made Bridge laugh harder than ever. He pulled his glove back on, and he and Duncan parted, both laughing too hard to do much else. They lay, spread out on the bathroom floor, bodies heaving with expelling tension. Letting go.

 

_When darkness comes  
And pain is all around,  
Like a bridge over troubled water   
I will lay me down._  
...  
_Like a bridge over troubled water  
I will ease your mind._

\- "Bridge Over Troubled Water", Paul Simon


End file.
